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CANADIAN FOOD ICONS (p. 4 of 4)

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SPECIAL TREATY

In these politically correct times, how ironic that the term “Indian candy” still passes without debate, especially since the popular West Coast treat was never actually part of the native diet. The process for making the jerky-like salmon sticks – hot- or cold-smoking the fattiest part of the salmon belly – does follow the traditional preserving method used by aboriginal tribes. But the ingredients needed to complete the final brining process, including maple syrup, soy sauce and brown sugar, would hardly have been available to them when the delicacy was created (maybe around the time the tourists arrived?).

You’ll find Indian candy crudely wrapped in wax paper at makeshift roadside stands or packaged in fancy cedar boxes next to the Cowichan Indian sweaters and factory-made totem poles in souvenir shops. It’s one of the most popular souvenirs now that visitors have discovered what West Coasters have known all along: How sweet it is.

Text: RHONDA MAY

REEKING HAVOC

Fifty years ago, the restaurant scene in Canada was decidedly more homogenous and monochromatic. When Arthur Carman left Greece for this country, he travelled across the land and found the same menu in restaurants everywhere: “Salisbury steak, beef and barley soup, chicken.” Foreign foods were practically unheard of, and even garlic was frowned upon. “If you ate garlic,” explains Carman, “you were considered an ignorant, illiterate peasant.” Not one to be deterred from his passions, when he opened his eponymous Carman’s Dining Club in Toronto in 1959, he began offering steak and lobster and, for the first time in Canada, a version of the garlicky bread he enjoyed back home in Greece. Today garlic bread is ubiquitous, but without the pioneering vision of dedicated gourmands such as Carman, we might still be crumbling crackers into our beef and barley soup. [ ]

Text: CHRIS JOHNS

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